Emo
by Molly4
Summary: Explains just what emo is to Seth, Sandy and Kirsten. Angsty backstory for the Cohens.


Disclaimers: I do not own or claim to own "The OC" or any of the characters in this story. They belong to Josh Schwartz and the good people at FOX.  
  
And in case you're wondering, I am pretty much an emo geek. I love all of it. Bright Eyes if my favorite. The fact that Seth Cohen likes them just makes me love him even more.  
  
Emo By: Molly  
  
Emo meant a friend to the friendless, at least to Seth Cohen. In a world where jocks peed in your shoes and pretty girls didn't even spare you a glance, you needed something to make you feel like you could quite possibly belong, that maybe somebody, somewhere, felt like you did. It made that constant yearning for companionship cease, even if just for the forty or so minutes the CD ran.  
  
The music poured into his ears while he quietly lay under his covers, trying not to think about the brutal fact that he hadn't spoken to a single person that day besides his own parents. There was so much inside him, so many words, just waiting to spill out, opinions that needed to be shared, potential debates he ached to participate in. But there was always that knowledge that lurked in the back of his mind that he was nothing. Nobody. There was a quiet voice inside of him, telling him that he was worthless in their eyes, that there was something about him so despicable that he couldn't even find someone to sit with him at lunch.  
  
But they were nobodies too, all of those singers who sang to him, crooning in their tired and world weary voices about all of their insecurities and grievances with people and how they were. Seth liked to imagine that all of those emo singers had been like him in high school; nerdy little outcasts who tried to act like being a geek was merely their thing, while quietly wishing for understanding. If they could get through that stage of loserness, maybe he could. Maybe Seth could go on to start a band and sing songs about getting his clothes stolen from his locker during gym class and going to the nurse faking violent stomach cramps so his dad would come and get him from school and he wouldn't have to walk around in his hideous green gym shorts. Maybe Seth could grow up and be the voice for yet another generation of disillusioned youth. Always, there was that dream, that shred of something that he held onto when everything seemed lost, when he wanted to just give it all up.  
  
Or maybe Seth would just get to the point where he could voice his pain like they did, and not be so goddamned ashamed about the way he hurt sometimes. He'd like that, being able to tell others about the sadness or the anger, without bawling or tripping over his words or anything like that. Sometimes Seth just felt too high-strung, his emotions too liable to burst through the walls he kept around himself. Perhaps when he learned to cope, learned to balance everything bad in his life, perhaps then he could sing about it. Seth loved the idea, though he wasn't sure that he could ever stop singing once he started. It was such a freeing thought, to get all of your thoughts out in the open, directed at nobody in particular. Emo was a release, and hell, a way to make money simply by sharing your pain with a world eager to connect with something.  
  
And even when he cried while listening to Bright Eyes or Death Cab, which was often, it felt more like a release of pain and frustrations than an addition of them. There in his room he was able to lower the walls and let everything out. He no longer had to pretend that he was just peachy keen so his parents wouldn't worry about him. He didn't have to sit there with a dopey grin on his face so all of his high school attackers wouldn't think they'd gotten the best of him. He could just be.  
  
Sometimes Seth imagined that he was friends with all of his emo and indie rock gods. He imagined sitting quietly in some smoky club, talking in angry tones about the state of the world, and the pure suckiness that generally encompassed the human race while some angry poet screamed rants about how coffee was black like his soul. Or something like that. Anything like that. Anything that involved some kind of human interaction. And he knew that guys like Connor Oberst could provide the kind of conversation that he craved so badly, something deep and intelligent, with just that right dose of self-deprecating humor. Pathetic as he knew it was, his emo gods were closer to being his friends than any of the Newport kids.  
  
But that was okay. Because that was exactly what emo was: a friend to the friendless.  
  
Emo meant fear, at least to Sandy Cohen. In a world where teen suicide and depression were high and anything was possible, he heard the words in those songs and cringed to think was going through the mind of his son. The words came pouring out from Seth's door and Sandy yearned for the days when he wasn't afraid of what would happen if he gave his own son a hug.  
  
The words were everything Sandy wished his son wasn't: sad, lonely, desperate, and depressed, at times, borderline suicidal. He just wanted his kid to be happy, but he had no control over that. What could he say when he quietly observed Seth slip in the door after coming straight home from school, then slipping upstairs for the rest of the evening to listen to doom and gloom music? He didn't want to just sit idly by while he watched his little boy slip further and further from any social interaction, or even household interaction. He spent too many nights taking dinner in his room, so many so that Sandy had instated a rule that he had to be present at the table every night, his portable CD player left in his room, a rule that clearly pissed off Seth.  
  
Other moves had been made to inspire Seth to leave his room once in awhile. The television and all of his video games had been moved to the more public living room, making it easier for Sandy and Kirsten to interact occasionally with their son, try and get a feel for how everything was going. It was hard to decipher Seth's grunts at times, but when he let his guard down, he'd begin to babble almost incoherently about just about anything, an adorable habit he seemed to have picked up from Sandy himself.  
  
But some days the lure of 'Grand Theft Auto' wasn't enough to pull Seth from his room, from his music. Those days were the hardest, as a parent. Sandy had found that parenting had become a virtual guessing game, one that was almost impossible to master. One day Seth was his best friend, laughing and joking, the next he was all glares, and rolled eyes.  
  
It wasn't even entirely the song lyrics that made Sandy fear the music his son listened to, sometimes it was just the voice singing every word like it was practically more than they could bear. The singing was uneven, choked, like the lead singer was desperately trying to hold back his screams. Sandy noticed with a heavy heart and a lump in his throat that Seth's voice took on that same quality at times. Not when he was heavily guarded and cracking jokes at the dinner table, but when Sandy walked into his room unannounced for a heart-to-heart and found Seth's cheeks tear-stained and he insisted that he was fine, he just wanted to be left alone.  
  
Emo was fear to Sandy Cohen, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it.  
  
Emo was confusion, at least to Kirsten Cohen. Her world growing up had been pom-poms and debutante balls, friends and parties and the beach. She never had to contend with being so different from every kid in her school that it inspired hatred. Her husband teased her about being Ms. Popularity, but Sandy didn't fully realize how close he was to the truth of the matter. She'd been just like Marissa Cooper in high school, not so much in personality, but in popularity. She'd been Newport's golden child, and when she began dating Jimmy Cooper, her popularity sky-rocketed. People whispered two weeks into their ill-fated relationship that they'd always known she'd end up with him.  
  
Kirsten didn't quite understand how Seth could relate to the music he seemed to worship. She wonders how it could be so hard to fit in when she did it effortlessly when she was in high school. She was probably forgetting some of the angst and rejection high school entailed, but it had been relatively fun for her. She'd liked her friends, liked classes well enough, and just generally had a pretty good time. She'd even cut loose a bit, no matter how much she denied it now, gotten drunk a few times, just to have fun. Just to be like everyone else. So maybe she did know a thing or two about the pressures and conformity of being a teenager.  
  
The music that blasted from Seth's room every afternoon held emotions that Kirsten hadn't even experienced until she'd left home for college. High school had been for reckless jubilation, college had been her time for growing, maturing, and going through all of the crap of life, such as loneliness and feelings of general inadequacy. Seth seemed much too young to be lonely and isolated from the rest of the world. There was always that worry in Kirsten's mind that his loner behavior would never cease, and he'd come home to visit from college on holidays, sneak up the stairs, close his door, and turn on the emo so he could quietly cry and sulk, or whatever the hell it was he did up there.  
  
Part of her figured that maybe Seth was too much like Sandy. Sandy never really fit in with any of the Newpsies and their husbands, but he had the ability to hide behind Kirsten, or hide behind his job, and avoid everything he hated so much. Maybe Sandy would've been just as much of an outcast had he attended high school in Newport. Neither Seth nor Sandy had a shred of the Newport elitist in them. Both loudly voiced that they would rather live in Berkeley.  
  
Perhaps that was the problem. Maybe if they'd never moved from that house in Berkeley Seth would be a happy kid. Maybe she'd catch him really smiling one time when he thought nobody was watching him. Maybe he'd be able to babble on like she was knew he was capable of doing, about this friend and that, what movies they'd seen, and what funny thing Joe Somebody had done that had made them all crack up. Maybe he wouldn't spend all of his time holed up in his room, listening to that music. And if it hadn't been for her family, they would have never moved to Newport. If she hadn't let Caleb convince her to stay maybe they'd still be in Berkeley and maybe her son would smile.  
  
Maybe emo was more than just confusion for Kirsten; maybe, just maybe, it was guilt.  
  
Emo was a reminder to Seth Cohen, at least now that he had a brother and a girlfriend.  
  
Emo reminded him of his life before Ryan and Summer, all the loneliness of being a nobody. And deep down, he knew he was still pretty much nobody, but now he was nobody with real people, not just people who sang on his CD player. He had people around him that cared for him, and more than just his parents this time.  
  
He still loved the music, still remembered the feelings he'd related to so closely, still related to some of them even. He still popped in a Bright Eyes CD after a bad day or a fight with Summer, and felt that familiar release as he clutched Captain Oats and moped. Nothing was more comforting, and he knew emo was something he would never give up or stop relating to, even if it was just as a reminder.  
  
Because it was a reminder. A reminder of how things were, and how things change, and how easily they could change back to before. How quickly Ryan could ditch him and Summer could dump him.  
  
Seth could accept that. Because, even if everything fell down around him, even if he reverted back to the days of never leaving his room, he'd still have his emo.  
  
Emo was a reminder of a past and a warning of what could happen, at least to Seth Cohen. But that was cool, because it no longer had to be a friend to the friendless.  
  
R&R 


End file.
